I was standing by the great river, in the shade of a huluppu tree. A woman was sitting on a rock not too far from me, with her feet dangling into the waters. She had golden curls, and she was wearing strange clothes, emerald green in colour, and with curious flaps and buttons.
Did I know her?
She said: “You’ve been knocked about. I’m sorry about that. People think we heal and that’s it. But one never forgets the pain. Sometimes you’re never the same because of it.”
I looked down at myself, but I seemed clean and well. I was wearing a plain linen smock, and my feet looked pretty and clean.
The woman said: “Inanna, you need to keep moving. Or you will be lost between the realms.”
I felt no sense of worry.
“I am not afraid,” I said.
“I am making my way towards you,” she said. “But I cannot get there as quickly as I would like.”
“There’s no hurry,” I said. “I’m happy sitting here.”
“Inanna, no, you need to keep moving.”
The woman smelled like roses. I had my head in her lap. The brilliant green cloth she was wearing was strangely slippery against my cheek.
She pushed my hair from my forehead, and smiled down at me.
“Do you know who I am?”
“You are Nammu.”
“Who gave you the master mee?”
“You mean my mee of love?”
“I think you know which mee I mean.”
“An gave it to me when I was a baby.”
“I had thought it was lost. Do you know what it is?”
“It connects me.”
“I did know about you, Inanna. Word did reach me. But I was slow to see what you might unlock.”
“I am the thirteenth Anunnaki,” I said.
She pressed her bright red lips to my forehead.
“You are too close to the darkness, Inanna. You need to come back to the light.”
* * *
I was lying on my side, beside a long, thin pit of fire. Two lions were tied up in the fire pit, one behind the other in a sad little row. Each worked its feet as if it was trying to walk but could make no progress. The flames were licking at their paws, but they did not seem to be in pain.
I thought, That is cruel; someone should cut them free.
Yet I felt no sense of urgency.
* * *
I was in my rooms in Uruk; I shut my eyes, and I was beside the river once more.
Nammu was there, next to me, on one bank of the river. On the far side of the river, I could see a man, dressed in strange black armour, with a black hood pulled up over his face.
I felt heat and turned. The lions were still in the fire pit, still moving their feet as if they were walking. It struck me now that they were going to burn alive.
I said to the woman in green: “Free them! We must free them! Or we must kill them. How can we let them burn alive?”
But she only looked at me, as if nothing was wrong. “Inanna,” she said. “Who do you think is burning? Who do you think is on the fire?”